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“Itachi!”

Itachi Uchiha, a seventeen-year-old student of Konoha’s elite Sarutobe Magnet School and star pupil, closed his locker and looked over his shoulder to see his cousin, Shisui Uchiha, running towards him at top speed. Seeing who it was, he turned to face Shisui, leaning lazily against his locker as he adjusted the buttons on his coat, and waited for the teen to reach him. It wasn’t unusual for Shisui to approach him at school, but the way he was absolutely sprinting towards Itachi gave the weasel some cause for concern. School had let out fifteen minutes ago, and already the pristine halls had been cleared of most students who weren’t engaged in one of the school’s many extra-curricular clubs or organizations. Shisui would normally be out in the parking lot himself by this time, talking to some of his friends and making plans before leaving; Itachi was normally one of the last to leave, usually staying after to speak to some of his teachers or attend to club business.

Shisui slowed down a bit once he realized that he’d gotten his cousin’s attention, but the teen was still pretty winded by the time he reached Itachi and needed a minute to gasp for air, bent forward with his hands on his thighs. He was sweating too, though part of that was probably because he was bundled up in a winter coat and hadn’t thought to take it off before he chased down his cousin. “Hey, thanks for waiting,” Shisui gasped a moment later, finally catching his breath and looking up at Itachi. “I just wanted to make sure you were still on for studying calculus this weekend with the guys and me,” he explained, brushing a string of hair out of his face.

When the two of them stood this close, one could easily see the familial relationship between the pair. Both Uchiha boys looked remarkably similar, each with deep black hair and eyes, but that was as far as the similarities went. Itachi was the more thoughtful and reserved of the two, far more likely to spend his days with his nose buried in a book than talking with another person. He barely talked, rarely talked, and despised socializing except with a few choice people. In contrast, Shisui was perpetually smiling in a manner that typically ranged from sweet to mischievous, complementing his friendly and outgoing personality. He was the kind of person who’d never met a stranger; the polar opposite of his cousin. None of these things really mattered to Itachi or Shisui; despite their differences, the pair got along with each other fairly well. Coming together to study, then, was not out of the question for them, or even all that unusual.

Still, Shisui’s apparent desperation to get hold of his cousin still caused Itachi to quirk a brow; that was all his cousin had been running down the hall over? A study party? “You couldn’t have texted me?”

Shisui rolled his eyes. “Well I could, but a certain someone takes forever to answer my messages! Besides, it’s easier to just track you down and ask while we’re both in school, so why bother with a text?”

Itachi resisted the urge to roll his own eyes and instead tied a wool scarf around his neck, before he began walking down the hall towards the back door of the building. As expected, Shisui followed along beside him, pulling on a wool hat from within the depths of his coat pockets. “Will your friends actually study this time?” Itachi inquired, trying to keep too much venom from leaking into his voice.

Shisui at least had the decency to look sheepish at the weasel’s inquiry; the last time he and Itachi had put together a study group with some of Shisui’s friends, the others had spent more time texting and doodling than actually working on their homework, and his cousin had understandably been rather put out by the time things were wrapped up at the end of the night. “Yeah, none of us did so hot on the last exam and their parents are riding them pretty hard. Not like getting ready to send them to reform school or anything, but Ikki is going to get his car privileges taken away if he doesn’t get at least a B on this test. Mom’s pretty adamant about me getting an A, but I think she’d settle for a B. Your folks, though…”

Shisui didn’t need to say anything more. Both cousins knew that Mikoto and Fugaku Uchiha, Itachi’s parents, were adamant about their son being at the top of his class. They knew how smart Itachi was, and were quite proud of how their son had dominated all of his school subjects from an early age. It didn’t necessarily occur to them that once Itachi hit high school, the difficulty levels in most of his subjects had spiked considerably; calculus was a completely different beast than basic algebra, and writing a book report on a Hardy Boys adventure book was nothing compared to a college level essay on a Shakespeare play. That was part of the reason for Itachi’s reluctance to work in a study group; any time that his group members wasted was time that he couldn’t afford to waste, unless he wanted to risk a lecture from his parents about keeping up his grades.

“Look, I told them that this is the last chance they’ll have to work with someone who actually knows the math and can explain it better than our teacher,” Shisui assured him. “If they start bugging you or flaking, we’ll kick them out. I promise.”

“Hn.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Itachi agreed, making his cousin smile. The two finally reached the door and pushed it open to step out of the building, only to walk straight into a fierce winter wind. They shivered at stopped for a moment to adjust themselves, Shisui turning up the collar on his coat and Itachi pulling up his scarf to cover his face. It was a particularly cold day in January, and this had been a pretty rough winter. Small mountains of snow were piled up at the edges of their school parking lot, waiting for warm weather to come and melt them as the students trekked slowly along the sidewalks towards their cars, being careful not to slip on any patches of ice. “That’s all I promise,” Itachi went on as he and Shisui made their way towards their cars.

“Awesome! And while we’re talking about it, do you want to come over tonight and work on those questions for English? Mom’s making chicken and dumplings.”

Itachi shook his head as they arrived at his vehicle: a small silver car sitting in the middle of the nearly-empty parking lot. It was expensive at his parents’ behest, low-key at his own, and devoid of bumper stickers or any interior décor to keep it “professional-looking” as his father would say. Shisui’s vehicle, a slightly less expensive SUV, was sitting a few spots over from his. It was a bit more personalized with a couple bumper stickers and a star-shaped air freshener dangling from the mirror, and although Itachi had never felt a strong desire to decorate his own car, he always felt a small pang of jealousy when he saw Shisui’s.

“Aww, why not?” Shisui whined as his cousin climbed into his car and quickly turned on the heater.

Itachi rolled down his windows (frowning at having to expose himself to the cold again) and simply said, “I’m working today.”

“Oh yeah, mom told me you got a job! You’re gonna be tutoring at another school, right?”

“Yes, and I need to go before I’m late.”

While others might have felt put out by Itachi’s tone, Shisui had known his cousin long enough not to take any offense. Itachi just liked to be prompt to things, especially when he was going somewhere or meeting someone new for the first time. So rather than getting upset, he waved to his cousin and called out “See you Saturday Itachi!” while walking towards his own car.

Itachi rolled up his window, adjusted his radio, and took a minute to quietly sit in his car and listen to some no-name rock band that was playing on the nearby college’s radio station. He’d learned that it was important to pause at the end of a stressful event, let himself unwind for a short time, and then move on to what would inevitably be the next stressful event in his life. He’d budgeted his time to give himself ten minutes in the car; on a good day he could spare maybe fifteen, but with the weather as bad as it was he didn’t want to push things and risk getting caught in traffic. Ten minutes would have to do.

In that ten minutes, Itachi closed his eyes, leaned his seat back, and did his best to let go of everything that had happened that day. The stress of his classes, the trials of researching colleges, the annoyance at looking over his father’s notes from the last company board meeting, missing his friends that weren’t at the same school as him, and everything else contributing to his current headache just melted away…

But ten minutes later, Itachi’s eyes were open as he reset his seat and pulled out of the school parking lot. He needed to drive across town, get through his job, make his way home, finish all his schoolwork, and then collapse in his bed by a reasonable hour. Sighing, the Uchiha turned up the music and prayed that his exhaustion wouldn’t get the better of him today.

-n-

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you wanted to look at it) Itachi’s exhaustion had given way to other things by the time he pulled into the parking lot of Konoha Senior High School, and collapsing before the day’s end no longer seemed so imminent. Unfortunately, one of those things that had cropped up during Itachi’s drive was annoyance, and of all the emotions that a tutor should feel towards their students, annoyance was probably the least productive and certainly not the best to show when making introductions. But as Itachi Uchiha walked into the school’s main building, feet echoing loudly on the tile floor as he ventured towards the school library (“straight down the main hallway and then a right through glass doors, you couldn’t miss it,” he’d been told), a small yet constant wave of annoyance was all he could muster up.

It had nothing to do with his student, at least not yet; in truth, this was Itachi’s first day on the job. He’d never met the person he was going to be tutoring, and only knew their name and the list of classes they were struggling with. He might end up with a lousy student, or he might strike gold and find the perfect subject for his tutoring lessons; really, there was no way to know at this point. So why the annoyance? Well, if Itachi was being honest with himself, he was annoyed that he had to be a tutor at all.

Everything had started when his mother had been talking with an aunt and made an off-hand comment about what a good teacher Itachi was for his younger brother, Sasuke, whenever the boy was struggling with his schoolwork. Somehow word had gotten around to friends and family, and before Itachi could even get a word in himself, everyone in the family was convinced that he was the greatest thing that had happened to teaching since Socrates. His parents had suggested (pushed and nagged, really), that he look into working for a tutoring service because he would clearly be amazing at it, aside from the fact that it would be one more gold star to pin on his college resume. His own school had no need for his tutoring services since it was full of either gifted students or not-so-gifted pupils whose rich families could afford private tutors of their own. At least that much had worked out in the Uchiha’s favor. Honestly, Itachi wouldn’t have wanted to tutor his own classmates even if the opportunity had presented itself. Study groups were one thing, but one-on-one tutoring? The embarrassment at having to tutor one of his peers would probably kill him or his pupil, if not both. So instead, a little sleuthing on his part (mostly to get his parents to shut up about it) had resulted in Itachi finding a tutoring service that not only worked with public schools but would also pay him for his time. If he didn’t follow through with this tutoring idea, his parents would no doubt push him into some other extra-curricular; at least this way he could make a little pocket money himself.

That didn’t mean that he was happy to be here, he thought as he finally found a set of double glass doors sunk back in a deep doorway amongst the green, cinder brick walls of the school hallway. Truthfully he’d rather be at home in his room killing time on the Internet, at least for a bit before he had to dig into his veritable mountain of homework, but neither of his parents were particularly big fans of lazing about, especially when it came to their prodigy of a son. And so his relaxing would have to wait for a few more hours, until he finished up his tutoring and then headed home to finish his own homework. With any luck, the tutoring portion of his day wouldn’t be too mentally taxing for him; he was still recovering from sixth-period advanced chemistry.

Footsteps that had thudded loudly in the hallway were now muffled by the brown carpet of the school library. Itachi walked straight back, passing several short bookshelves and two rows of computers before he came to the study area in the back of the library, composed of several old wooden tables with four beat-up chairs surrounding each of them. Most of these tables were empty, but the second to last table towards the back had two people sitting by it. One of them was a middle-aged man with tan skin and short brown hair, who was talking with a muscular teenage boy that had dark blue hair. The former was dressed in khakis and a button-up shirt, while the latter had on a pair of raggedy jeans and a plain (but tidy) navy t-shirt. As Itachi approached, the man looked up and stood, extending his hand before introductions had even been made. “Itachi Uchiha?”

“Hn,” the Uchiha replied with a polite nod as he took the hand and shook it. “You’re Mr. Iruka then?”

“Yes. So nice to finally meet you, after all those emails,” the man stated with a polite smile. “The tutoring company had nothing but good things to say about you, so we’re incredibly happy you could make it all the way out to us.”

Itachi thought about politely disagreeing, insisting that this school was only 25 minutes from his own, less than 15 if you had your own car (like he did), but that might turn in to a conversation, and if there was one thing that Itachi did not feel like starting this afternoon, it was small talk and idle chattering. So he simply said, “No problem,” and peered around Iruka with feigned curiosity. “I’m tutoring you?” he asked the other student.

The boy with blue hair grinned sheepishly at Itachi, offering a smile that was full of unusually pointy teeth. “Yeah, I’m Kisame Hoshigaki. It’s nice to meet you.”

Itachi nodded once to Kisame, and then turned his attention back to Iruka. “So, we’ll be all right to use the school library here?”

“Yes, I’ve taken care of it with the librarians,” Iruka explained. “Our school lets out a little later than yours at 3:30, and pretty much everyone is cleared out by 4. The library stays open until 4:30, and the rest of the school is locked up by 5. If you really need to keep working past 4:30, we have a couple teachers who might let you borrow their classroom, but since you’re coming for tutoring twice a week…”

Itachi nodded, understanding that Iruka was asking without asking that he and Kisame try to be done and out of the school by 4:30. That shouldn’t be too difficult; Kisame was having problems with a junior-year writing class, not vector calculus. “We’ll be fine,” he assured the teacher as he stepped past him and set his backpack down on the table near Kisame’s navy-colored messenger bag.

“Perfect! The tutoring service will handle your payment on every other Thursday, and since you know where the library is and who you’re tutoring, I’ll go ahead and let you get started. Good luck!” And with a wave of his hand, Iruka was gone.

“Thanks in advance,” Kisame said as Itachi sat down beside him. “I need to pull my grades up in a couple classes, or I’m off the football team. Coach is pretty laid back about a lot of things, but grades aren’t one of them.”

“Hn,” Itachi replied, only half-listening. He’d assumed it was something like that; the other tutors at the company had warned him that when a school called requesting “the best tutor you’ve got,” oftentimes it was because they were hoping to pull off a miracle and bring up a struggling athlete’s grades just enough that they could avoid academic probation on their team. He’d also been warned that the athletes could be a massive pain in the ass to deal with, but so far Kisame seemed all right.

“Oh, Iruka said you wanted to see a writing sample from me,” Kisame said aloud, as if just remembering he was supposed to have something for his tutor to look over. “Um, let me get it out of my bag…”

Itachi watched quietly, somewhat amused and mostly annoyed, as Kisame pulled out notebooks, workbooks, scrap paper, a water bottle, a crumpled paperback novel, a battered pencil pouch, half a granola bar, and finally a stapled essay from his messenger bag. The poor thing was crumpled quite badly, and its time in the messenger bag had managed to severely smudge the pencil writing on the front sheet. Kisame sheepishly set the essay in front of Itachi and offered a string of apologies as he attempted to stuff the other items back into his bag. He needn’t have bothered; Itachi was barely listening, having immediately picked up the essay to read over it once Kisame had given it to him.

Honestly, it wasn’t terrible. The writing was somewhat juvenile, like something a middle-school student might turn in, but at least the argument was somewhat coherent and not totally riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes. This was something Itachi could work with; the writing couldn’t be fixed overnight, of course, but Itachi could easily see the potential in Kisame, and was certain that a few months would bring his writing up to grade level.

“So, what do you think?” Kisame asked, somewhat nervously despite the smile on his face. “Am I a lost cause?”

Itachi handed the essay back to the other teenager and shook his head. “Well you’re not going to win any Pulitzers with this, but it’s not bad.”

Kisame’s small smile grew into a much larger grin at Itachi’s quip. “Ah, well. Print journalism’s dead anyway.”

Itachi rolled his eyes, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips for a moment. No, best not to look too amused right now; Kisame might try to make conversation and get friendly with him instead of doing any work. “Can you tell me what part of writing causes you the most trouble?”

“The whole thing?”

Itachi took a calming breath. Annoyance would not be productive, he reminded himself. “Can you be more specific?”

“I dunno, just, I feel like I understand what the essay prompts are asking me to write, and I know what I want to say in my head, but when I try to actually write it out all the ideas get jumbled together, I forget half of what I was planning to say, and then whatever I actually end up turning in to my teacher is a hundred times worse than what I actually wanted to write. Does that make sense?”

“Mostly.” That at least sounded like a problem Itachi could work with, and one that Kisame seemed willing to remedy. Itachi had been slightly worried about getting some jock that thought he could bribe (or worse, bully) Itachi into doing all the work for him, instead of admitting that they had a problem which only hard work and effort could fix. Speaking of which, Itachi should probably go ahead and start working with Kisame. “Ok, the first thing you’ll want to do is make an outline…”

Kisame, to his credit, was a pretty good student. He took notes, tried to follow along with what Itachi was saying, and although he’d definitely need more help (probably at least for the next several weeks), Itachi felt like they’d made real progress by the time 4:30 rolled around. He caught a librarian walking around and shutting down computers, and decided that it was time for him and Kisame to leave. “Let’s leave things here and pick up again on Monday,” he said, already moving to grab his bag from the table.

Kisame nodded, and if he was a bit startled by Itachi’s apparent eagerness to take off, he didn’t show it. Instead, he stuffed his notebook and pencils back into his bag (rather messily, Itachi noted) and was standing to go a moment later. It was only when Kisame stood that Itachi was really able to appreciate their size differences. He’d noticed immediately that Kisame probably had about fifty pounds of pure muscle on the Uchiha, but he was also almost a head taller than Itachi as well, and quite a bit wider too. His bag was absolutely stuffed, but he didn’t even seem to notice the weight on his shoulders; he probably could easily lift twice as much without breaking a sweat, Itachi realized. “You good to go?” Kisame asked, scooting in his and Itachi’s chairs.

Itachi nodded and began walking towards the exit, noticing Kisame was following closely but not making any effort to converse. He felt somewhat guilty then, and realized that he should probably make an effort to be friendlier, especially with such a nice student and having just met him, but he was too worn out today to even think about it. Kisame, for his part, didn’t seem to take offense and didn’t try to make any small talk either; he’d pulled out his phone almost as soon as they’d left the library and was currently texting someone.

The two walked in silence until they got to the school parking lot, where they had to part ways. It was then that Itachi noticed his car appeared to be the only one left in the open parking section; all the other cars left were parked against the side of the building in an area labeled “faculty only.” Unable to suppress his curiosity, he turned to Kisame and asked, “Do you have a ride home?”

The shark shook his head and pulled up a thick scarf that he’d extracted from his messenger bag at some point during their walk out of the school. “Nah. Normally I catch a ride home with someone, but everyone left ages ago so I’ll probably just walk. It’s not that far, and I need the cardio anyway.”

Itachi’s eyes scrunched up slightly as a gust of wind slammed into the two of them, and he felt bad for Kisame. Regardless of how far away Kisame lived (even if his claims of being close to home were to be believed), the walk would still be miserable in this weather. He thought for a moment, and as Kisame opened his mouth to say something, presumably bidding Itachi farewell, the weasel inquired, “Do you want a lift?”

Kisame looked a bit surprised, but another gust quickly killed any thoughts that he may have had about turning down the Uchiha’s offer. “That’d be great, if it’s not out of your way. It’s 3242 Pine Street; I can guide you-“

“I should be able to find that,” Itachi cut in, already walking to his car. Pine Street was a little under two miles from here, give or take, and while an athlete like Kisame might have no trouble with that walk on a nice day, the January weather they were dealing with today would make such a trip miserable. He quickly unlocked the car and started the engine, giving it time to warm up while Kisame climbed in and got situated.

“Nice car,” the shark commented, sliding his seat back a good foot. He was taller than Itachi’s last passenger, and the messenger bag at his feet took up plenty of leg room itself.

“Thanks,” was all Itachi said in reply. As they were leaving the parking lot and getting on the main road, he wondered if he should’ve said more; like that it was a present from his parents, that he’d gotten it for keeping a perfect 4.0 up to his junior year of school, that he knew it was kind of plain but his dad didn’t want it to get too “frivolous-looking” inside and he didn’t know what he’d even decorate it with if he could. But all of those things seemed pointless to say, and besides, hadn’t he wanted to avoid talking to Kisame just five minutes ago?

The shark didn’t seem to mind how quiet Itachi was being, and actually turned up the radio a bit so they could listen to the music. The drive took a bit more than ten minutes, thanks to a couple of annoying traffic lights, but soon enough they were pulling onto Kisame’s street. The next time they were stopped at a light, Kisame turned his head to speak to his tutor. “Hey, Itachi?”

“Hn?”

“Not to be a pest or anything, but would you mind if I got your number? I need to have a rough draft of a paper to turn in by Tuesday, but we have practice tomorrow and a game Saturday night, so if I’m gonna get anything done before tutoring next week I might need a few pointers over the weekend.”

Itachi considered the shark’s request for a moment, and then said, “Sure.” There couldn’t be much harm in giving Kisame his number; besides, if it was just a rough draft and not a final copy, hopefully Kisame wouldn’t get too stressed and bother him all that much. He waited until the shark had his phone out and quickly recited his phone number; a moment later, his own phone beeped from a text, letting him know that Kisame had sent him a message. Good timing too; a few seconds after that, Kisame was pointing out his house (a small ranch-style home) and Itachi was pulling into his driveway. Kisame gathered up his bags, said, “Thanks for the lift, Itachi!” and quickly exited the car. Itachi waved goodbye to him, made sure the shark was able to get into the house (no point in taking him home if Kisame was just going to be locked out in the snow) and then left.

His own home was a good 25 minute drive from Kisame’s, and by the time he actually got home it was past 5. He came in, briefly said hello to his mother in the kitchen while she worked on dinner, and then walked straight upstairs to his room. Once there, he dropped his bags on the carpeted floor, crossed the room to his full-sized bed, and collapsed onto the warm duvet cover, wishing he could just sinking into the warm, comfy bliss of his mattress for a few hours. He shut his eyes and took a few deep breaths, relaxing himself before he’d have to start on his homework. Surprisingly, it was rather easy to de-stress from tutoring. Kisame had been a great student: very polite, not too social, and he was actually someone Itachi hadn’t minded being around. They weren’t likely to become the best of friends anytime soon, but as far as tutoring students go, the weasel had lucked out.

He gave himself 10 minutes to unwind before getting back up and dragging himself across the room to his desk, near where his bag had been thrown. Today’s homework consisted of calculus and chemistry problems, notes on a chapter from his history class, and reading three chapters from the book his English class was reading. If he was lucky, everything could be knocked out in four hours.

Not that Itachi could work straight through everything for four hours, of course. He got about an hour’s worth of work done before Mikoto called him downstairs for dinner, and even eating quickly (and chugging down a cup of coffee afterwards) he still lost almost half an hour of work. Calculus and chemistry couldn’t be done back-to-back without completely frying his brain, so after knocking out history and calculus he took a shower break before delving back into work. Chemistry took a bit longer than he’d been hoping, and by the time he got to reading for English it was almost 10. Sighing, Itachi shut off his desk lamp, turned on the lamp beside his bed, and then crawled under his covers to read. He probably needed to take notes during this for the class discussion tomorrow, but that could wait until morning. He’d just read it for now and try to formulate his questions in the morning when he was eating breakfast.

At least the book was interesting, and Itachi was able to finish his reading assignment by 11. By that point, his brain was fried, his eyes were begging to close, and all he wanted to do was sleep. But first, he took a moment to check his phone for messages.

There were three tonight, which was an unusually high number for Itachi. One was Kisame’s, whose number Itachi quickly saved to his phone. The next, sent shortly after Itachi got home, was from Shisui, and was simply a textual reminder of their conversation today about the study group on Saturday. The final one was from Deidara, a friend of his. It read, “Come over tomorrow night! Sasori and I miss you ” and had been sent while Itachi was having dinner.

That text actually made Itachi smile a bit. He hadn’t seen his friends since last weekend, and since tomorrow was Friday he’d be free from school obligations for a few days. His parents likely wouldn’t mind; they loved Sasori to pieces, and assumed that as long as Itachi was with either Sasori or Shisui, he wouldn’t get into too much trouble. He quickly texted back, “Sounds good, I’ll come over after school,” and locked his phone. He was reasonably certain that Deidara would reply quickly (his phone was perpetually glued to his hand), but reading that would have to wait until morning. As soon as he’d set his phone down, his head hit the pillow, and Itachi was out like a light.

:) (Smile) — Description
“Itachi!”

Itachi Uchiha, a seventeen-year-old student of Konoha’s elite Sarutobe Magnet School and star pupil, closed his locker and looked over his shoulder to see his cousin, Shisui Uchiha, running towards him at top speed. Seeing who it was, he turned to face Shisui, leaning lazily against his locker as he adjusted the buttons on his coat, and waited for the teen to reach him. It wasn’t unusual for Shisui to approach him at school, but the way he was absolutely sprinting towards Itachi gave the weasel some cause for concern. School had let out fifteen minutes ago, and already the pristine halls had been cleared of most students who weren’t engaged in one of the school’s many extra-curricular clubs or organizations. Shisui would normally be out in the parking lot himself by this time, talking to some of his friends and making plans before leaving; Itachi was normally one of the last to leave, usually staying after to speak to some of his teachers or attend to club business.

Shisui slowed down a bit once he realized that he’d gotten his cousin’s attention, but the teen was still pretty winded by the time he reached Itachi and needed a minute to gasp for air, bent forward with his hands on his thighs. He was sweating too, though part of that was probably because he was bundled up in a winter coat and hadn’t thought to take it off before he chased down his cousin. “Hey, thanks for waiting,” Shisui gasped a moment later, finally catching his breath and looking up at Itachi. “I just wanted to make sure you were still on for studying calculus this weekend with the guys and me,” he explained, brushing a string of hair out of his face.

When the two of them stood this close, one could easily see the familial relationship between the pair. Both Uchiha boys looked remarkably similar, each with deep black hair and eyes, but that was as far as the similarities went. Itachi was the more thoughtful and reserved of the two, far more likely to spend his days with his nose buried in a book than talking with another person. He barely talked, rarely talked, and despised socializing except with a few choice people. In contrast, Shisui was perpetually smiling in a manner that typically ranged from sweet to mischievous, complementing his friendly and outgoing personality. He was the kind of person who’d never met a stranger; the polar opposite of his cousin. None of these things really mattered to Itachi or Shisui; despite their differences, the pair got along with each other fairly well. Coming together to study, then, was not out of the question for them, or even all that unusual.

Still, Shisui’s apparent desperation to get hold of his cousin still caused Itachi to quirk a brow; that was all his cousin had been running down the hall over? A study party? “You couldn’t have texted me?”

Shisui rolled his eyes. “Well I could, but a certain someone takes forever to answer my messages! Besides, it’s easier to just track you down and ask while we’re both in school, so why bother with a text?”

Itachi resisted the urge to roll his own eyes and instead tied a wool scarf around his neck, before he began walking down the hall towards the back door of the building. As expected, Shisui followed along beside him, pulling on a wool hat from within the depths of his coat pockets. “Will your friends actually study this time?” Itachi inquired, trying to keep too much venom from leaking into his voice.

Shisui at least had the decency to look sheepish at the weasel’s inquiry; the last time he and Itachi had put together a study group with some of Shisui’s friends, the others had spent more time texting and doodling than actually working on their homework, and his cousin had understandably been rather put out by the time things were wrapped up at the end of the night. “Yeah, none of us did so hot on the last exam and their parents are riding them pretty hard. Not like getting ready to send them to reform school or anything, but Ikki is going to get his car privileges taken away if he doesn’t get at least a B on this test. Mom’s pretty adamant about me getting an A, but I think she’d settle for a B. Your folks, though…”

Shisui didn’t need to say anything more. Both cousins knew that Mikoto and Fugaku Uchiha, Itachi’s parents, were adamant about their son being at the top of his class. They knew how smart Itachi was, and were quite proud of how their son had dominated all of his school subjects from an early age. It didn’t necessarily occur to them that once Itachi hit high school, the difficulty levels in most of his subjects had spiked considerably; calculus was a completely different beast than basic algebra, and writing a book report on a Hardy Boys adventure book was nothing compared to a college level essay on a Shakespeare play. That was part of the reason for Itachi’s reluctance to work in a study group; any time that his group members wasted was time that he couldn’t afford to waste, unless he wanted to risk a lecture from his parents about keeping up his grades.

“Look, I told them that this is the last chance they’ll have to work with someone who actually knows the math and can explain it better than our teacher,” Shisui assured him. “If they start bugging you or flaking, we’ll kick them out. I promise.”

“Hn.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Itachi agreed, making his cousin smile. The two finally reached the door and pushed it open to step out of the building, only to walk straight into a fierce winter wind. They shivered at stopped for a moment to adjust themselves, Shisui turning up the collar on his coat and Itachi pulling up his scarf to cover his face. It was a particularly cold day in January, and this had been a pretty rough winter. Small mountains of snow were piled up at the edges of their school parking lot, waiting for warm weather to come and melt them as the students trekked slowly along the sidewalks towards their cars, being careful not to slip on any patches of ice. “That’s all I promise,” Itachi went on as he and Shisui made their way towards their cars.

“Awesome! And while we’re talking about it, do you want to come over tonight and work on those questions for English? Mom’s making chicken and dumplings.”

Itachi shook his head as they arrived at his vehicle: a small silver car sitting in the middle of the nearly-empty parking lot. It was expensive at his parents’ behest, low-key at his own, and devoid of bumper stickers or any interior décor to keep it “professional-looking” as his father would say. Shisui’s vehicle, a slightly less expensive SUV, was sitting a few spots over from his. It was a bit more personalized with a couple bumper stickers and a star-shaped air freshener dangling from the mirror, and although Itachi had never felt a strong desire to decorate his own car, he always felt a small pang of jealousy when he saw Shisui’s.

“Aww, why not?” Shisui whined as his cousin climbed into his car and quickly turned on the heater.

Itachi rolled down his windows (frowning at having to expose himself to the cold again) and simply said, “I’m working today.”

“Oh yeah, mom told me you got a job! You’re gonna be tutoring at another school, right?”

“Yes, and I need to go before I’m late.”

While others might have felt put out by Itachi’s tone, Shisui had known his cousin long enough not to take any offense. Itachi just liked to be prompt to things, especially when he was going somewhere or meeting someone new for the first time. So rather than getting upset, he waved to his cousin and called out “See you Saturday Itachi!” while walking towards his own car.

Itachi rolled up his window, adjusted his radio, and took a minute to quietly sit in his car and listen to some no-name rock band that was playing on the nearby college’s radio station. He’d learned that it was important to pause at the end of a stressful event, let himself unwind for a short time, and then move on to what would inevitably be the next stressful event in his life. He’d budgeted his time to give himself ten minutes in the car; on a good day he could spare maybe fifteen, but with the weather as bad as it was he didn’t want to push things and risk getting caught in traffic. Ten minutes would have to do.

In that ten minutes, Itachi closed his eyes, leaned his seat back, and did his best to let go of everything that had happened that day. The stress of his classes, the trials of researching colleges, the annoyance at looking over his father’s notes from the last company board meeting, missing his friends that weren’t at the same school as him, and everything else contributing to his current headache just melted away…

But ten minutes later, Itachi’s eyes were open as he reset his seat and pulled out of the school parking lot. He needed to drive across town, get through his job, make his way home, finish all his schoolwork, and then collapse in his bed by a reasonable hour. Sighing, the Uchiha turned up the music and prayed that his exhaustion wouldn’t get the better of him today.

-n-

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you wanted to look at it) Itachi’s exhaustion had given way to other things by the time he pulled into the parking lot of Konoha Senior High School, and collapsing before the day’s end no longer seemed so imminent. Unfortunately, one of those things that had cropped up during Itachi’s drive was annoyance, and of all the emotions that a tutor should feel towards their students, annoyance was probably the least productive and certainly not the best to show when making introductions. But as Itachi Uchiha walked into the school’s main building, feet echoing loudly on the tile floor as he ventured towards the school library (“straight down the main hallway and then a right through glass doors, you couldn’t miss it,” he’d been told), a small yet constant wave of annoyance was all he could muster up.

It had nothing to do with his student, at least not yet; in truth, this was Itachi’s first day on the job. He’d never met the person he was going to be tutoring, and only knew their name and the list of classes they were struggling with. He might end up with a lousy student, or he might strike gold and find the perfect subject for his tutoring lessons; really, there was no way to know at this point. So why the annoyance? Well, if Itachi was being honest with himself, he was annoyed that he had to be a tutor at all.

Everything had started when his mother had been talking with an aunt and made an off-hand comment about what a good teacher Itachi was for his younger brother, Sasuke, whenever the boy was struggling with his schoolwork. Somehow word had gotten around to friends and family, and before Itachi could even get a word in himself, everyone in the family was convinced that he was the greatest thing that had happened to teaching since Socrates. His parents had suggested (pushed and nagged, really), that he look into working for a tutoring service because he would clearly be amazing at it, aside from the fact that it would be one more gold star to pin on his college resume. His own school had no need for his tutoring services since it was full of either gifted students or not-so-gifted pupils whose rich families could afford private tutors of their own. At least that much had worked out in the Uchiha’s favor. Honestly, Itachi wouldn’t have wanted to tutor his own classmates even if the opportunity had presented itself. Study groups were one thing, but one-on-one tutoring? The embarrassment at having to tutor one of his peers would probably kill him or his pupil, if not both. So instead, a little sleuthing on his part (mostly to get his parents to shut up about it) had resulted in Itachi finding a tutoring service that not only worked with public schools but would also pay him for his time. If he didn’t follow through with this tutoring idea, his parents would no doubt push him into some other extra-curricular; at least this way he could make a little pocket money himself.

That didn’t mean that he was happy to be here, he thought as he finally found a set of double glass doors sunk back in a deep doorway amongst the green, cinder brick walls of the school hallway. Truthfully he’d rather be at home in his room killing time on the Internet, at least for a bit before he had to dig into his veritable mountain of homework, but neither of his parents were particularly big fans of lazing about, especially when it came to their prodigy of a son. And so his relaxing would have to wait for a few more hours, until he finished up his tutoring and then headed home to finish his own homework. With any luck, the tutoring portion of his day wouldn’t be too mentally taxing for him; he was still recovering from sixth-period advanced chemistry.

Footsteps that had thudded loudly in the hallway were now muffled by the brown carpet of the school library. Itachi walked straight back, passing several short bookshelves and two rows of computers before he came to the study area in the back of the library, composed of several old wooden tables with four beat-up chairs surrounding each of them. Most of these tables were empty, but the second to last table towards the back had two people sitting by it. One of them was a middle-aged man with tan skin and short brown hair, who was talking with a muscular teenage boy that had dark blue hair. The former was dressed in khakis and a button-up shirt, while the latter had on a pair of raggedy jeans and a plain (but tidy) navy t-shirt. As Itachi approached, the man looked up and stood, extending his hand before introductions had even been made. “Itachi Uchiha?”

“Hn,” the Uchiha replied with a polite nod as he took the hand and shook it. “You’re Mr. Iruka then?”

“Yes. So nice to finally meet you, after all those emails,” the man stated with a polite smile. “The tutoring company had nothing but good things to say about you, so we’re incredibly happy you could make it all the way out to us.”

Itachi thought about politely disagreeing, insisting that this school was only 25 minutes from his own, less than 15 if you had your own car (like he did), but that might turn in to a conversation, and if there was one thing that Itachi did not feel like starting this afternoon, it was small talk and idle chattering. So he simply said, “No problem,” and peered around Iruka with feigned curiosity. “I’m tutoring you?” he asked the other student.

The boy with blue hair grinned sheepishly at Itachi, offering a smile that was full of unusually pointy teeth. “Yeah, I’m Kisame Hoshigaki. It’s nice to meet you.”

Itachi nodded once to Kisame, and then turned his attention back to Iruka. “So, we’ll be all right to use the school library here?”

“Yes, I’ve taken care of it with the librarians,” Iruka explained. “Our school lets out a little later than yours at 3:30, and pretty much everyone is cleared out by 4. The library stays open until 4:30, and the rest of the school is locked up by 5. If you really need to keep working past 4:30, we have a couple teachers who might let you borrow their classroom, but since you’re coming for tutoring twice a week…”

Itachi nodded, understanding that Iruka was asking without asking that he and Kisame try to be done and out of the school by 4:30. That shouldn’t be too difficult; Kisame was having problems with a junior-year writing class, not vector calculus. “We’ll be fine,” he assured the teacher as he stepped past him and set his backpack down on the table near Kisame’s navy-colored messenger bag.

“Perfect! The tutoring service will handle your payment on every other Thursday, and since you know where the library is and who you’re tutoring, I’ll go ahead and let you get started. Good luck!” And with a wave of his hand, Iruka was gone.

“Thanks in advance,” Kisame said as Itachi sat down beside him. “I need to pull my grades up in a couple classes, or I’m off the football team. Coach is pretty laid back about a lot of things, but grades aren’t one of them.”

“Hn,” Itachi replied, only half-listening. He’d assumed it was something like that; the other tutors at the company had warned him that when a school called requesting “the best tutor you’ve got,” oftentimes it was because they were hoping to pull off a miracle and bring up a struggling athlete’s grades just enough that they could avoid academic probation on their team. He’d also been warned that the athletes could be a massive pain in the ass to deal with, but so far Kisame seemed all right.

“Oh, Iruka said you wanted to see a writing sample from me,” Kisame said aloud, as if just remembering he was supposed to have something for his tutor to look over. “Um, let me get it out of my bag…”

Itachi watched quietly, somewhat amused and mostly annoyed, as Kisame pulled out notebooks, workbooks, scrap paper, a water bottle, a crumpled paperback novel, a battered pencil pouch, half a granola bar, and finally a stapled essay from his messenger bag. The poor thing was crumpled quite badly, and its time in the messenger bag had managed to severely smudge the pencil writing on the front sheet. Kisame sheepishly set the essay in front of Itachi and offered a string of apologies as he attempted to stuff the other items back into his bag. He needn’t have bothered; Itachi was barely listening, having immediately picked up the essay to read over it once Kisame had given it to him.

Honestly, it wasn’t terrible. The writing was somewhat juvenile, like something a middle-school student might turn in, but at least the argument was somewhat coherent and not totally riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes. This was something Itachi could work with; the writing couldn’t be fixed overnight, of course, but Itachi could easily see the potential in Kisame, and was certain that a few months would bring his writing up to grade level.

“So, what do you think?” Kisame asked, somewhat nervously despite the smile on his face. “Am I a lost cause?”

Itachi handed the essay back to the other teenager and shook his head. “Well you’re not going to win any Pulitzers with this, but it’s not bad.”

Kisame’s small smile grew into a much larger grin at Itachi’s quip. “Ah, well. Print journalism’s dead anyway.”

Itachi rolled his eyes, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips for a moment. No, best not to look too amused right now; Kisame might try to make conversation and get friendly with him instead of doing any work. “Can you tell me what part of writing causes you the most trouble?”

“The whole thing?”

Itachi took a calming breath. Annoyance would not be productive, he reminded himself. “Can you be more specific?”

“I dunno, just, I feel like I understand what the essay prompts are asking me to write, and I know what I want to say in my head, but when I try to actually write it out all the ideas get jumbled together, I forget half of what I was planning to say, and then whatever I actually end up turning in to my teacher is a hundred times worse than what I actually wanted to write. Does that make sense?”

“Mostly.” That at least sounded like a problem Itachi could work with, and one that Kisame seemed willing to remedy. Itachi had been slightly worried about getting some jock that thought he could bribe (or worse, bully) Itachi into doing all the work for him, instead of admitting that they had a problem which only hard work and effort could fix. Speaking of which, Itachi should probably go ahead and start working with Kisame. “Ok, the first thing you’ll want to do is make an outline…”

Kisame, to his credit, was a pretty good student. He took notes, tried to follow along with what Itachi was saying, and although he’d definitely need more help (probably at least for the next several weeks), Itachi felt like they’d made real progress by the time 4:30 rolled around. He caught a librarian walking around and shutting down computers, and decided that it was time for him and Kisame to leave. “Let’s leave things here and pick up again on Monday,” he said, already moving to grab his bag from the table.

Kisame nodded, and if he was a bit startled by Itachi’s apparent eagerness to take off, he didn’t show it. Instead, he stuffed his notebook and pencils back into his bag (rather messily, Itachi noted) and was standing to go a moment later. It was only when Kisame stood that Itachi was really able to appreciate their size differences. He’d noticed immediately that Kisame probably had about fifty pounds of pure muscle on the Uchiha, but he was also almost a head taller than Itachi as well, and quite a bit wider too. His bag was absolutely stuffed, but he didn’t even seem to notice the weight on his shoulders; he probably could easily lift twice as much without breaking a sweat, Itachi realized. “You good to go?” Kisame asked, scooting in his and Itachi’s chairs.

Itachi nodded and began walking towards the exit, noticing Kisame was following closely but not making any effort to converse. He felt somewhat guilty then, and realized that he should probably make an effort to be friendlier, especially with such a nice student and having just met him, but he was too worn out today to even think about it. Kisame, for his part, didn’t seem to take offense and didn’t try to make any small talk either; he’d pulled out his phone almost as soon as they’d left the library and was currently texting someone.

The two walked in silence until they got to the school parking lot, where they had to part ways. It was then that Itachi noticed his car appeared to be the only one left in the open parking section; all the other cars left were parked against the side of the building in an area labeled “faculty only.” Unable to suppress his curiosity, he turned to Kisame and asked, “Do you have a ride home?”

The shark shook his head and pulled up a thick scarf that he’d extracted from his messenger bag at some point during their walk out of the school. “Nah. Normally I catch a ride home with someone, but everyone left ages ago so I’ll probably just walk. It’s not that far, and I need the cardio anyway.”

Itachi’s eyes scrunched up slightly as a gust of wind slammed into the two of them, and he felt bad for Kisame. Regardless of how far away Kisame lived (even if his claims of being close to home were to be believed), the walk would still be miserable in this weather. He thought for a moment, and as Kisame opened his mouth to say something, presumably bidding Itachi farewell, the weasel inquired, “Do you want a lift?”

Kisame looked a bit surprised, but another gust quickly killed any thoughts that he may have had about turning down the Uchiha’s offer. “That’d be great, if it’s not out of your way. It’s 3242 Pine Street; I can guide you-“

“I should be able to find that,” Itachi cut in, already walking to his car. Pine Street was a little under two miles from here, give or take, and while an athlete like Kisame might have no trouble with that walk on a nice day, the January weather they were dealing with today would make such a trip miserable. He quickly unlocked the car and started the engine, giving it time to warm up while Kisame climbed in and got situated.

“Nice car,” the shark commented, sliding his seat back a good foot. He was taller than Itachi’s last passenger, and the messenger bag at his feet took up plenty of leg room itself.

“Thanks,” was all Itachi said in reply. As they were leaving the parking lot and getting on the main road, he wondered if he should’ve said more; like that it was a present from his parents, that he’d gotten it for keeping a perfect 4.0 up to his junior year of school, that he knew it was kind of plain but his dad didn’t want it to get too “frivolous-looking” inside and he didn’t know what he’d even decorate it with if he could. But all of those things seemed pointless to say, and besides, hadn’t he wanted to avoid talking to Kisame just five minutes ago?

The shark didn’t seem to mind how quiet Itachi was being, and actually turned up the radio a bit so they could listen to the music. The drive took a bit more than ten minutes, thanks to a couple of annoying traffic lights, but soon enough they were pulling onto Kisame’s street. The next time they were stopped at a light, Kisame turned his head to speak to his tutor. “Hey, Itachi?”

“Hn?”

“Not to be a pest or anything, but would you mind if I got your number? I need to have a rough draft of a paper to turn in by Tuesday, but we have practice tomorrow and a game Saturday night, so if I’m gonna get anything done before tutoring next week I might need a few pointers over the weekend.”

Itachi considered the shark’s request for a moment, and then said, “Sure.” There couldn’t be much harm in giving Kisame his number; besides, if it was just a rough draft and not a final copy, hopefully Kisame wouldn’t get too stressed and bother him all that much. He waited until the shark had his phone out and quickly recited his phone number; a moment later, his own phone beeped from a text, letting him know that Kisame had sent him a message. Good timing too; a few seconds after that, Kisame was pointing out his house (a small ranch-style home) and Itachi was pulling into his driveway. Kisame gathered up his bags, said, “Thanks for the lift, Itachi!” and quickly exited the car. Itachi waved goodbye to him, made sure the shark was able to get into the house (no point in taking him home if Kisame was just going to be locked out in the snow) and then left.

His own home was a good 25 minute drive from Kisame’s, and by the time he actually got home it was past 5. He came in, briefly said hello to his mother in the kitchen while she worked on dinner, and then walked straight upstairs to his room. Once there, he dropped his bags on the carpeted floor, crossed the room to his full-sized bed, and collapsed onto the warm duvet cover, wishing he could just sinking into the warm, comfy bliss of his mattress for a few hours. He shut his eyes and took a few deep breaths, relaxing himself before he’d have to start on his homework. Surprisingly, it was rather easy to de-stress from tutoring. Kisame had been a great student: very polite, not too social, and he was actually someone Itachi hadn’t minded being around. They weren’t likely to become the best of friends anytime soon, but as far as tutoring students go, the weasel had lucked out.

He gave himself 10 minutes to unwind before getting back up and dragging himself across the room to his desk, near where his bag had been thrown. Today’s homework consisted of calculus and chemistry problems, notes on a chapter from his history class, and reading three chapters from the book his English class was reading. If he was lucky, everything could be knocked out in four hours.

Not that Itachi could work straight through everything for four hours, of course. He got about an hour’s worth of work done before Mikoto called him downstairs for dinner, and even eating quickly (and chugging down a cup of coffee afterwards) he still lost almost half an hour of work. Calculus and chemistry couldn’t be done back-to-back without completely frying his brain, so after knocking out history and calculus he took a shower break before delving back into work. Chemistry took a bit longer than he’d been hoping, and by the time he got to reading for English it was almost 10. Sighing, Itachi shut off his desk lamp, turned on the lamp beside his bed, and then crawled under his covers to read. He probably needed to take notes during this for the class discussion tomorrow, but that could wait until morning. He’d just read it for now and try to formulate his questions in the morning when he was eating breakfast.

At least the book was interesting, and Itachi was able to finish his reading assignment by 11. By that point, his brain was fried, his eyes were begging to close, and all he wanted to do was sleep. But first, he took a moment to check his phone for messages.

There were three tonight, which was an unusually high number for Itachi. One was Kisame’s, whose number Itachi quickly saved to his phone. The next, sent shortly after Itachi got home, was from Shisui, and was simply a textual reminder of their conversation today about the study group on Saturday. The final one was from Deidara, a friend of his. It read, “Come over tomorrow night! Sasori and I miss you ” and had been sent while Itachi was having dinner.

That text actually made Itachi smile a bit. He hadn’t seen his friends since last weekend, and since tomorrow was Friday he’d be free from school obligations for a few days. His parents likely wouldn’t mind; they loved Sasori to pieces, and assumed that as long as Itachi was with either Sasori or Shisui, he wouldn’t get into too much trouble. He quickly texted back, “Sounds good, I’ll come over after school,” and locked his phone. He was reasonably certain that Deidara would reply quickly (his phone was perpetually glued to his hand), but reading that would have to wait until morning. As soon as he’d set his phone down, his head hit the pillow, and Itachi was out like a light.